2013 World Series of Poker Dates Announced

By Dan Katz - Nov 15th, 2012

With the scent of the most famous poker tournament in the world still fresh in the air, Caesars Interactive Entertainment has announced the dates for the 2013 World Series of Poker (WSOP). As it stands now, it looks like the schedule will be virtually identical to this year’s poker festival.

The fun will kick off on Wednesday, May 29th with the start of round-the-clock cash games. The traditional first tournament, the Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em Event, will almost certainly start on opening day, as well.

The 2013 WSOP will run for 49 consecutive days, culminating with the elimination of the 10th place finish of the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event on Tuesday, July 16th, setting up the final table. It is expected that, as has become the new tradition, the Main Event will be paused until the “November Nine” reunite in the fall. The Main Event will span more than a week, beginning Sunday, July 7th with the first of three Day 1 flights and ending, at least temporarily, on the aforementioned July 16th.

The actual day-by-day schedule has yet to be determined, but should not look too different than this year’s. There will be around 60 events (there were 61 this year), including the usual Ladies and Seniors events. In a press release, WSOP staff said that the weekends would be geared towards No-Limit Hold’em events, likely because those are the easiest days of the week for casual players to get to the Rio to participate. In 2012, 17 different No-Limit Hold’em events started on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

One of those 17 events was The Big One for One Drop, the grand $1 million buy-in event in which one-ninth of the buy-in went to charity. That tournament will not be played in 2013, but it was announced during this past Main Event final table that it will return in 2014.

A total of 74,766 poker players registered for the 61 events at the 2012 World Series of Poker, creating a total prize pool that eclipsed $222 million, a new WSOP record. The Main Event saw 6,598 test their skill to try to win a piece of the $62,031,385 prize pool. Maryland’s Greg Merson won the $8,531,853 first prize. It was a marathon final table, taking almost 13 hours just to narrow the field from the final three to the winner. 399 hands were played across both days of the final table, shattering the previous record of 364.